


Poison Ivy

by TheRantDragon



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 01:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17612639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRantDragon/pseuds/TheRantDragon
Summary: “Thrown into a patch of poison ivy… by Poison Ivy.” “Talk about some insane irony.”





	Poison Ivy

**Author's Note:**

> Another old work dug up from my Tumblr! I always enjoyed this one.

Artemis found out she was allergic to poison ivy the hard way. Being a city kid all her life, it wasn’t like she had ever really learned about the dangers of exposure to the shiny green herb. Like, she’d heard of it before, obviously, but she’d never joined the girl scouts or anything so she was pretty much in the dark on knowing when it was around.

And now she was writhing in an itchy sort of hell, and it seemed like pretty much the only places that had avoided the taint were her crotch and ass. She couldn’t even imagine how it could get any worse than  _that_ , but the thought left her cringing so she went back to hissing through her teeth and scratching her skin until it bled.

“Thrown into a patch of poison ivy… by Poison Ivy,” Artemis snarled, dull nails scraping over a particularly awful splotch of skin just above her navel. Every time she thought about the disgusting,  _stupid_ irony of it all, it made her scratch harder. Like maybe if she raged hard enough in that green bitch’s direction, she could transfer the pain and discomfort.

If  _only._

“Talk about some insane irony,” Dick commented with almost no empathy, and the archer shot him a glare so icy she thought she caught him shivering a little. 

“I’d advise you try to stop scratching at it,” Kaldur insisted, looking very uncomfortable  _for_ her. He seemed perturbed the most by her misfortune, probably because he lived under the freaking ocean, where Artemis now envied because it didn’t have god-forsaken  _poison ivy_  in it.

“That. Is. Not happening,” Artemis said through gritted teeth, still attacking the angry crimson place. At that point she was kind of hoping her skin would peel off; bleeding profusely would be a better end than this. It was both humiliating and torturous.

Poison Ivy had a very sharp arrow with her name on it.

_“Kid Flash. B03,”_ the Cave announced helpfully, and Artemis groaned out loud and flung her head back against the couch in defeat. Her deep gray eyes searched the ceiling, brows coming together in an angry furrow.

If there was a God up there, he really, really liked punishing her for his amusement.

“Helllloooooo– Woah!” came a not so unexpected greeting-turned-gasp from the entrance to the Cave’s living area. All heads turned toward the speedster. The archer went ahead and greeted him with a glare full of daggers and a dare-to-say-anything at all about her spreading red rashes. Him and his stupid wind swept red hair and his cheeks flushed from the March wind. And his green eyes landing on her like a magnet, sweeping over her in an instant that had her, of all fucking things,  _blushing_ suddenly because he was seeing her like  _this_ ; a clumsy, frustrated mess of bleeding skin and nail marks.

Someone strike her down right now, please.

Wally stared at her, concern or something flashing vaguely across the surface of his irises before he sort of caught himself and gave a little laugh, pointing in her direction while he addressed the rest of the Team.

“What happened to her, is she allergic to Dick’s bad sense of humor?” he asked, ignoring the scowl his best friend gave him. Artemis interrupted before Dick could say anything, and she kind of secretly enjoyed the way Wally’s eyes immediately snapped back on her.

“I’m allergic to your face, actually,” the archer scoffed; she mentally cursed herself for sounding so lame, and quickly tried to salvage something of her dignity. “It was the strangest thing, I was completely fine until  _you_ walked in.”

_Smooth._

“Her reaction  _was_ very sudden…” Dick pondered, stroking his chin in thought.

Wally rolled his eyes.

“Harr harr,” he said in monotone, then cleared his throat and stuffed one of his hands into his pockets and threw a thumb over his shoulder. “I ran into Tornado on the way in just now, I think Bats is on his way for a mission briefing. You’re welcome for the heads-up.”

Megan frowned. “So soon? We’ve only been back for a couple of hours.”

“You know how Batman is,” Conner grunted, shrugging his shoulders. He tilted his head down to look at Artemis, and frowned. “You better sit this one out.”

Artemis felt defiant anger well up inside of her, but she knew it was true. A fat lot of good she’d be doing her teammates if she was spending her time digging arrows out of her quiver just to scratch at her back. Ooooh, that actually sounded like a good idea…

She waved a nonchalant hand at her teammates. 

“It’s fine. I’ll just be here.  _Scratching_ ,” the blonde informed them, pulling her shirt up for the millionth time in ten minutes to aggressively attack the poison ivy inching across the flat expanse of her stomach. 

They all nodded. Dick catapulted himself over the back of the couch as the others moved out dutifully to get suited up early for once, but stopped to grab Wally’s shoulder because he was lingering; something Artemis tried not to notice, and focused instead on her immediate itching problem.

“Come on, bro, I’m sure you’ll be in on this one since you missed our oh-so-fun romp with Poison Ivy,” the archer heard Dick say.

“Yeah, right. I’ll be there in just a minute, okay?”

There was a pause. Artemis swallowed, her body turned at a slight angle on the couch while she was bent over, scratching at her calf.

“…suit yourself. You’ll be late again.”

She heard the sound of Dick leaving. 

Then there was silence, and Artemis was sure Wally had stayed behind to get in some last minute jabs at her less than stellar situation. So she gathered her wits about her and whipped around with a snarking comment hanging from the tip of her clever tongue, only to realize the room was empty.

Puzzled, she blinked and deflated.

Oh. He wasn’t there.

“Here, use this!” 

“Ah!”

Artemis shrieked very much without her permission, but his voice had emanated so suddenly from her left side, loud and close enough that she felt a burst of hot breath tickle the inside of her ear. Her immediate reflex to the scare was to growl in irritation and sock him hard in the arm, an action that caused him to yelp and drop a fat white tube of paste.

“Ow! What was that for!?” Wally demanded, rubbing at his bicep and looking at her reproachfully.

She didn’t care about his cute pouty face; no one ever got the jump on Artemis Crock without getting something in return. Namely, her fist.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Artemis said, her fist still raised. She let her gaze fall to the tube that had thumped softly onto the couch cushion, right by her thigh. She picked it up in her free hand, the other lowering and releasing it’s fist until it was back to it’s former occupation of scratching the blood out of her side. “What’s this?”

“That,” Wally began with some spite in his voice. “Is itch relief cream. You need to put that on like, right now, okay, because that is going to keep spreading unless–”

Artemis laughed a little. “So you knew it was poison ivy. What are you, a boy scout?”

Wally puffed out his chest proudly. “That’s right! For one whole year.”

“Just one?” Artemis inquired, quirking one of her delicate eyebrows. She couldn’t conceal her smirk either; boy scout Wally West. She felt sorry for whoever had been his den leader.

“I  _hated_ it,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I’m not the biggest fan of the outdoors. And I, uh… “ he paused, wrinkling his nose and rubbing at the back of his neck. Artemis felt something flutter in her chest, and swallowed. “Kinda got poison ivy while I was there.”

“Good,” Artemis found herself saying, though inside she cringed for the image of a much younger Wally West in her same wretched state. “So you understand me when I tell you I feel like I’ve died and been cast into the ninth circle of hell?”

“Absolutely,” Wally agreed, smirking at her almost conspiratorially. His cute dumb face caused her to let out an unbidden bark of laughter that closely resembled the sound a goose might make when being stepped on. Her face flushed horribly and she cleared her throat. 

Luckily Wally seemed far to preoccupied with liberating the tube from her hand to notice her flounder. 

He popped the cap, then gestured for her to hold out her hand. She did so, and a generous measure of cool pink paste squirted onto her palm. She brought it to her forearm and rubbed it in, sighing a little at the strange sense of relief it immediately brought her. It felt good, and she rubbed it in hard, until she found herself biting at her bottom lip in something close to ecstasy.

“Hey, quit that!” Wally scolded suddenly, grabbing her wrist. His hand was warm and calloused and she shot him a look of confused anger.

“What are you doing? You’ll catch it!”

“I don’t care, you were starting to scratch again!”

Artemis blinked. She looked down and saw that, indeed, the pink paste spread across her skin had the unmistakable lines where her nails had started to drag through it. Oops.

“Oh,” she said blankly.

“You’re impossible,” Wally breathed out at her with a surprising amount of affection, shaking his head. The tone of his voice caught Artemis’s attention, and she stared at him. He looked at her, their faces closer than either of them was comfortable with, but the gaze held for so long she forgot she was itching. Then, with a cough to clear his throat and break the odd stare-off, Wally let go of her hand, stood up, and pointed at her. “Keep putting that on, and  _try_ not to scratch. I’ll be back in a minute!”

Before Artemis could protest, he was gone in a burst of speed. Grumbling to herself about the speedster and still feeling the intense warmth where his hand had gripped her wrist in a firm but gentle hold, she went on with her task. Luckily, she was able to restrain herself enough, and by the time Wally came zipping back in with Superboy in tow, she had finished.

Artemis glanced at him. His green eyes looked full of mirth, and then she noticed that Superboy had a roll of deep green duct tape in his hand, and Wally had two bright an frilly looking oven mitts she was sure belonged to M’gann.

Her eyes widened.

“Wally, Conner, don’t you DARE,” she shrieked, jumping to her feet, but Wally was much faster.

Artemis never forgave them for taping oven mitts over her hands.


End file.
